


Observer Log - INTL - 9145

by deathofaraven



Series: self-indulgent AUs no one asked for [2]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AI John Watson, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Clones, Established Relationship, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Reincarnation, author's note has additional information, but he's only there for two seconds and is therefore inconsequential, don't expect Moran to be normal either, it should be okay to read if you haven't played HZD; hopefully, look: it's basically boyfriends on a roadtrip with their cat and webMD-linked alexa, no mormor or johnlock, only a crossover in the sense of the world and background lore (not the game's plot) was used, technically post-canon?? I guess??, there is one (1) full smut near the end, uuuuuhhh what else should y'all know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:13:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27253237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathofaraven/pseuds/deathofaraven
Summary: Sometimes he gets a strange sense of deja vu when he and Jim are alone together. Like a tug towards the edge of a cliff. Like they've been here before. He wonders if this is what obsession is.He tries to focus on their work instead.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/Jim Moriarty
Series: self-indulgent AUs no one asked for [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920061
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Observer Log - INTL - 9145

**Author's Note:**

> Dear _gods_ , I've been working on this since February of 2019. I can't believe it's finally done. Biggest thanks to Rebel_Dynasty and evaoswald (of tumblr) for beta-reading! I'm sorry about the rush. And thanks to everyone who's offered moral support/advice. <3
> 
> For those who don't know and are wondering what this is about, Horizon is set far into a post-apocalyptic future where Earth's population has been reduced and is now living in tribes. Animal-like machines fill the wilds and ruins of the Metal World, _our_ world, are the only things left of our time. Very few people really know what happened to the Old Ones, but most tribes seem to have superstitions for why they vanished. Playstation has a playlist of trailers and behind the scenes info [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLol_ykYs3OQ5yDmNlZz4DqrP6DxWLIrz1) if you want/need more info. I would highly recommend [this](https://youtu.be/wzx96gYA8ek) short trailer, particularly if you want to see what Banuk shamans look like, as well as the world and a couple machines.
> 
> For anyone wondering _why_ , mainly I just wanted to play with the concept of Jim and robots. The series suggests he's good with computers but we don't really see much of that, so I wanted to see more and in a different way. I also wanted to see if Sherlock might be able to enjoy a mystery that wasn't centred around crime. And I love both series, so why not?
> 
> I hope, if anyone reads this, you enjoy it and are having a good day. ^^ (Maybe I'll add more in the future. Let me know if the rating needs to be adjusted.) Til next time!

“Tell me what you see.”

Jim says it like a contemplative philosopher, but Sherlock doesn’t need to look at him to know there’s a petulant twist to his lips and a challenge in his eyes. Sherlock sighs—

“ _Fine_.” Reaches up with deft fingers to tap his Focus out of standby mode.

“No, no, _no_ ,” Jim protests, stopping his fingers a hair’s breadth away. There’s a faint whine to his tone, growing with each word. Still not _truly_ petulant, then. Only...amusedly disappointed. “Not like _that_. Don’t get stupid now. Tell me what you _see_.”

This time Sherlock manages to hold back the sigh. He can still feel it, though: a tension just behind his lungs and a frustrated exasperation. It’s _not_ stupid to use his Focus. They’re too far away for it to do more than show him a slightly closer view. He ponders the wisdom of an argument; reluctantly drops his hand to rest atop his knee. And attempts to sharpen his concentration as he looks out over the valley.

They’re on the edge of the desert, a thin band of river is the only thing separating them from the rainforest Sherlock knows and dreads so well. The valley’s just as rocky, just as dusty, as the plateau they’ve set up camp on, but far more populated. A smattering of weathered trees are making a stand against the elements. Long stalks of red, sun-dried grass dance about their roots in every burning breeze—or _would_ , if the air wasn’t so stagnant and oppressively hot. If Jim would let him turn on his Focus, he knows he’d see the bio-readouts of dozens of small animals going about their daily lives. But they’re not alone.

He rolls his shoulders. “A herd of six grazers, a pair of longlegs on guard.” He can still feel something vaguely chiding emanating from Jim’s direction, so he continues: “A trio of scrappers by the road, clearing—” Sherlock pauses; he can’t _see_ what they’re breaking apart, but he can guess what it most likely is— “watchers? The probable result of an ambush?”

Jim’s fingers smooth lightly over Sherlock’s hip, dancing lightly along the top of his trousers’s waistband. There’s a smug, leading indulgence to his tone as he murmurs, “ _Good_.”

“Striders by the river—useful if you were serious when you stated you wanted to travel quickly. Another herd of grazers beyond it.” Sherlock hesitates. This is a test, no matter how Jim phrases it or how lazily it’s presented. Jim has _expectations_ and Sherlock’s never been able to resist meeting them. He turns his gaze from his limited stretch of ochre desert, back towards the ocean of trees. There are snapmaws to the northwest of them—but then there are _always_ snapmaws there; it’s not a normal trade route and no one can be bothered to clear the machines away. A stormbird on the distant horizon is nothing more than a large smudge against a neon-streaked sky. He’s missing something. Something potentially relevant to their current situation or Jim never would have pushed for more. It takes another moment before he sees it: a plume of smoke rising from another nearby plateau. With the amount of smoke it’s belching into the sky, it must be a very large bonfire. Bandits aren’t bold enough to be so obvious and Oseram aren’t that stupid; only other Carja would be so oblivious to their surroundings as to tempt discovery. Sure enough, he’s barely had the thought before a disgruntled plume of birds bursts from the green, trailing sleek metal shadows. “A Carja camp— _idiots_. They’ve attracted glinthawks; we’ll need to keep the fire low...though going without _might_ be a more intelligent precaution.”

“ _Very_ good. What else?”

Sherlock frowns, uncertain what else Jim could possibly be pushing for. He has no shortage of details at his disposal—therein lies the problem with being capable of _seeing everything_. From the angle of the sun, he can infer the temperature of the end-of-the-day heat that is relentlessly attempting to choke the life from everything around them and he can puzzle out the difference in temperature between here and the valley. He knows how many more days they have until their tent will need repairs and how long Jim has kept the few Banuk tokens he’s decided are worth keeping. He’s aware of the machine that has just dropped out of stealth behind them—a stalker Jim has always called Sebastian—to lounge lethargically on the over-warm stone. But Jim knows all this—he knows Sherlock’s secrets, and the secrets of many others; he knows where Sebastian is because the information goes directly to his Focus. He doesn’t actually care about what risks they might encounter on the road, if only because they won’t stop him from continuing on and, if they somehow _did_ manage to kill him, he _still_ wouldn’t care. There’s no need for this test.

A scoff slips from him, lacking its usual bite. “There _are_ easier methods of making me talk.”

“Yes, but you _like_ being challenged. You like when I challenge you and you like when I praise you.” The indulgent note has deepened into something teasing, flowing opposite the slow tracing of Jim’s fingers up his chest. “’S _fair_ , isn’t it?”

“It’s _expected_. We’ve played this game before.”

There’s something in the way that Jim’s gaze sharpens that makes Sherlock want to smile. The accepting of a dare. But he’s also amused, aware that this is predominantly an attempt at being petty. At seeing what Jim will do with it. But they have time—all of the summer and most of the autumn—and Jim only pulls him down to drop a quick kiss atop his head, taking a moment to breathe in against his curls.

“We’ll find something new for you.”

For a moment Sherlock feels like preening, warm and thrilled to have Jim’s attention, but it’s a dangerous and fickle thing and he knows well enough that he’s unlikely to get whatever this new thing may be any time soon. Instead he accepts the attention eagerly, nearly purring, only to frown at Jim’s abrupt withdrawal.

“I need to work on something,” comes the explanation as Jim releases him and gets to his feet. The implied _‘don’t follow me, Sherlock’_ lingers in the silence following his words like a morning’s chill—not yet sharp, but still a warning.

Sherlock heeds it. Respects Jim too much not to, even if he can’t help but watch out of the corner of his eye as he retreats into the tent. The problem is that, with Jim gone, he has nothing to focus on. This is a less than ideal time to start any work of his own. It’s sunset and the light is horrendous—blood-tinted and hazy, bad light for any sort of working; it beads on Sebastian’s framework, dripping over his exposed wiring where he sprawls out, long and lanky, as if he were a real cat. Blue lights glow, eerie and distant in the valley, growing brighter as the sky dims and Sherlock has no desire to draw their attentions. It’s going to be dull tonight. With an annoyed huff, he lies back on the warm stone and activates his Focus to pull up some articles on the 2036 Submergence. Desert nights, he’s always thought, are the most annoying.

* * *

They first meet in the ruins of one of the Old Ones’ government archives.

He isn’t yet called “Sherlock” and he isn’t _supposed_ to be there—he’s meant to be at home, in Meridian, being coddled by his parents and suffering his brother’s expectations for something greater than he currently is. Slipping out in the night to go study ruins whenever he gets bored of the city is not what anyone wants for him. There are, of course, reasons not to go—his sister had vanished into a Cauldron when they were young, presumed killed by the machines that were built there, and that alone should be reason enough to avoid the wilds. But this is fun and fascinating and he couldn’t care less about other people’s expectations or the amount of danger involved. Especially not since he found his Focus two years ago and discovered seemingly endless secrets no one else seems to see. The device is liberating and enticing in the worst and best of ways and he has no intention of squandering it.

Which is only part of the reason, upon reaching his destination and finding a hole gouged into the side of the building’s twisted metal remains, he doesn’t hesitate to squeeze his lanky frame inside. It’s dark and almost unbearably musty, the dust-thick air sitting heavy on his tongue. He has to be mindful of every step he takes on the damp-slick floor; every sound echoes. And what little information his Focus can find him isn’t really helpful. Corrupted holographic displays flickering with an unintelligible mishmash of symbols, an almost incomprehensible maze of ancient powerlines, dozens of computers that have been utterly destroyed by time and the weather. But he’s fortunate. One of the servers had been backed up, remotely connected to the Focus of an ancient, calcified corpse slumped behind a desk. More knowledge than he’d easily know what to do with, all locked up in a vault built to withstand whatever was thrown at it. Some of the data _had_ to be salvageable, didn’t it? He needs to find it.

The only problem is that the door is already open to a dim hallway when he gets there.

 _Bandits? Machines? Logical to assume a government building might still have fully autonomous security systems after so long, provided there were means to repair them._ But his Focus isn’t picking up any signs of active machinery beyond the usual trails of powerlines in the walls. Now that a tingle of paranoia has crept over him, he can’t seem to shake it. _Stupid; ridiculous_ , he chides himself, ducking under a rusted beam just in time to avoid walking into it.

 **Have you considered avoiding getting tetanus?** flashes off to the side of his Focus’s display a split second later.

“Thank you, JOHN,” he murmurs dryly, fighting back a wry smirk. What little amusement he finds in the concern seems to fade at the realisation that there’s an odd glow ahead. And yet his Focus still shows no sign of any out-of-place technology. _Strange_. It’s enough to make him consider reaching for his knife, even if he dismisses the thought immediately. Too much of a risk without knowing what lies ahead.

The stranger standing at the end of the hall, hands busy with a bit of stray wiring and a fragile, cracked screen does nothing to make him feel better about the decision.

 _Oseram_ , is his first thought, eyeing the thick, lined leather of the stranger’s clothing. Except…his haircut was indicative of other Carja and— _Oh!_ Vividly blue cables had been threaded into his skin, casting an eerie glow over his chest and arms where his coat pulls away from his body—Banuk shaman, the only ones willing to undergo such a procedure. Fascinating, _odd_ , even as it raises the question of what he’s doing so far from the Claim and Ban-Ur. Until it occurs to Sherlock that there’s something far more concerning to wonder: how did he slip past the Focus’s scanner?

The stranger rolls his gaze toward him, feigning surprise. (Something in his posture and the surety of the way he carries himself suggests to Sherlock that he’s never actually been surprised in his life. If anything, he gives the impression that he’s been aware of Sherlock since he first entered the building and had immediately registered him as a non-threat.) He projects casual boredom well beneath it, as if he doesn’t really _want_ to be here, but the speed of his fingers as they move over the screen gives him away. Quick, precise movements, more muscle memory than conscious effort. Which means he and Sherlock must be here for the same information...which complicates things.

“ _Oh!_ ” The stranger punctuates his faux-exclamation with a breathless laugh that, to Sherlock’s surprise, sounds genuine. “You’re the least prepared bandit I’ve seen in _years_ …” The start of a smile rolls over his lips, the same casually bored movement as the glance he’d given him. “...maybe the stupidest if you’re delving here alone.”

“I’m not a bandit,” Sherlock bites out cooly, pride wounded. He doesn’t even _look_ like one—draped in Carja silks like one of the brightly coloured birds back home. He’s willing to admit that delving alone isn’t one of the most intelligent ideas, even without the obvious interferences, it’s a dangerous terrain to trod upon. But the stranger has no room to talk. _He_ ’s alone as well.

“If you’re not a bandit...are you here for this as well?” The stranger’s tone suggests he already knows the answer. His smile doesn’t falter in the least. “...do you intend to _fight_ me for it?”

“Should I?” Sherlock can’t stop mockery from flooding his tone. Not because he has doubts that either of them would be willing to fight for the information, no—he’s never been forced to fight another delver, but he’s also never been squeamish about fighting machines or bandits before; he can see from the set of the stranger’s posture that it’s a mutually shared opinion. It would be easy to reach for his knife and start a fight. He simply has no inclination to do so.

As if in response to his initial thought, he hears something drop lightly to the ground. There’s a sharp whir of a stealth-generator disengaging behind him; the high-pitched hum of a weapon ( _a gun,_ his Focus helpfully tells him though it explains nothing—he’s not certain he’s ever seen one before) readying to fire follows it. If Sherlock hadn’t already been quite still, he would’ve frozen at the sound. The adrenaline surging through him is unwelcome and heady as he flicks a glance towards the newcomer out of the corner of his eye—the machine almost reaches his hip, its small head and lanky body are angled directly toward him, a single clawed foot clutching the wall as if it’s only just realised the hall isn’t big enough for all of them. Banuk paintings streak its constantly undulating tail. Sherlock’s stomach twists. He’s never fought a stalker in close quarters before; he only just controls the urge to chuck a blast bomb at it, reminding himself that he’s underground and close enough to get caught in the resulting blast. His gaze returns to the stranger, nearly coaxing a frown from him at the vague smugness he seems to radiate.

“Dunno. _Should_ you?” comes a bored reply.

Sherlock bristles, teeth grinding just a little. _Fine_. It wasn’t like he was _genuinely_ planning anything to begin with. He just wants a copy of whatever is in the building’s storage. But _very well_ , the message is received. The ability to control machines is rare and dangerous, but, even without it, he’ll behave if he must. He manages to school his expression into one of equally bored curiosity, responding only to push back with what little he currently can. “Does it know any other tricks?”

Even later, he’s still not entirely certain what it is that brings about their almost-truce. He only knows that, at some point, the wit and the banter lose its aggressive edge and he’s being allowed close enough to scan the files. They take to opposite sides of the server room, wanting space but both aware that two Focuses working on restoring and cataloguing this much data is better, faster, than one. They do not speak. Occasionally, through the annoyance of manually setting aside a couple hundred terabytes of data that are corrupted beyond all means of repair except letting his Focus slowly, slowly piece together what should be there, he can feel eyes on him but every time he happens to glance towards the stranger he’s utterly focused in his work.

(In slightly annoying contrast, the stalker is almost constantly on the move. First on guard before the door, now prowling atop an upper-level walkway, now clinging to a wall above their heads, silently watching. It vanishes as it walks, moving silently and without any indication until it appears in a new location. Even without the work to distract him, Sherlock doubts he’d be able to willingly sleep in its presence. Not that it seems to care about him beyond whether or not he’s an immediate threat but Sherlock’s too aware of the dangers of machines to ever trust the rare occasions when someone’s managed to tame them.)

It’s almost a week of surreptitiously peeking at each other, of wondering who this stranger is and why they’re there, before, late one evening, a personal message finally flits across his Focus’s display along with a data request.

**_> What is your name?_ **

He hesitates even as he allows the transfer to start, adding some files from the library he’d found his Focus in to make up for the files that were still in repair. His given name...doesn’t suit him. Has never felt right, like trying to put damp clothing on. There is one that fits better, he’s aware, but it feels stupid to admit to anyone else after keeping it to himself for so long. How could he even begin to explain it? That there was a man, one of the Old Ones from the Metal World, who looked like him down to the precise placement of moles on his neck and the shades of colour in his eyes. Who, upon further research, thought as he does and liked the things he likes now. It sounds fanatical, like a ridiculous daydream, even to him. Still, he sends his own data request and follows it up with the name before he can overthink it.

_> Sherlock. What is yours?_

He doesn’t immediately receive a reply. Both transfers complete in relative silence, Sherlock immediately sends a copy of every file labelled “medical” to JOHN for further practical analysis as his Focus begins to separate the new files into “entertainment” or “research”. He’s just begun shifting through the files that don’t seem to belong in either category when another notification flashes over the display.

**_> new message; attachment: ‘hi’. Open?_ **

Curious, Sherlock slowly reaches up to tap on the attachment. An ancient news article fills the display and Sherlock has to pause as he looks over the photo that heads it—the man in the image bears an uncanny resemblance to the stranger, the clothes are wrong and the stranger looks quite a few years younger, but everything else from the desolate depth of his stare to the way he holds his shoulders and how his mouth curves, just slightly, in taunting are identical. It’s eerie in the most fascinating way. Prompts him to skim quickly though the article ( _arrested for attempting to steal the Crown Jewels...broke into three of the most highly secured...why was he allowed to go free?_ ) until he finds a single word circled in bright red. The answer to his question, he assumes: _Jim_.

There’s eyes on him again. When he glances away from his work, the stranger—no, _Jim_ meets his eyes for the first time in ages. He’s sitting in a wan pool of blue machine-light, the shadows and planes of him blown into strange proportions, but he looks pleased. And just as curious as Sherlock feels.

Sherlock forces himself to quiet the tide of his thoughts just enough to keep from throwing a barrage of thoughts and questions in Jim’s direction. _Do you know why we resemble them? How did you find him? When? Why do we share this? Why did, whatever this is, happen?_ He doubts Jim would know. If he’s anywhere near as clever as Sherlock suspects, he may have ideas. But it seems unlikely anyone would know.

Instead he nods—accepting their shared position, and the strangeness of whatever it means, just as willingly as he’s now accepting Jim’s presence. And, when he returns to his work, it’s with a far more curious mind and the faint hope of another message.

* * *

The moon still hangs in the sky when they wake, staining the clouds into a hazy, silvered imitation of seafoam. The air feels wrong, too heavy, and seems to coat the back of their throats in a thin, sticky layer of dryness. It’s a quiet morning. Neither of them are particularly eager to disentangle themselves from the other—it’s comfortable, lying there with Jim’s head resting in the crook of his neck, breath warm against his clavicle, and neither of them slept well—but they manage. Breakfast first, then sorting out the necessary gear. It’s a long walk through the desert from here; there’s no way for either of them to know if they’ll have another chance for peaceful rest before they reach the mountains.

Communicating mainly through a series of glances and slight gestures, they quietly repack their camp. The sun is only a suggestion on the horizon when they’ve finished, but it’s already bordering on too-warm as they make their way across the plateau and, after a quick check of Sherlock’s Focus for anything unpleasant that might be waiting for them, manage to clamber and skid back down to the road. Sebastian, who’d vanished shortly after they’d woken, trots up to them. He immediately leads them toward a pair of striders—they don’t flee, merely toss their horse-like heads and scrape their metal hooves against the ground. Jim’s control code flashes over the side of Sherlock’s Focus, entirely corrupting the striders’ base code for the foreseeable future.

It’s an easy ride north, up towards a nearby ridge, and the roads, ruined and potholed though they are, are deserted for the first hour. A thunderjaw patrols the road at the top of the ridge. It’s massive footfalls shaking loose stones from the road, sending them crashing into the valley far, far below. They reach it far too soon. The sun catches in over-bright beams over its massive frame, the angle casting the hulking forms of its side-mounted artillery into sharp relief. It spots them immediately. Its ocular sensors burn amber as it tries to understand what they are; radar whirring, guns and cannons shifting into position to be used.

They don’t stop to take it out of commission.

Sebastian vanishes beside them. Sherlock only _just_ catches Jim’s note of displeasure above the clatter of the striders’ hooves as they’re immediately yanked onto another road. Off to the right, where the road winds through a series of small hills—hopefully out of range of the thunderjaw’s various detection systems. Heart pounding in his ears, Sherlock isn’t certain he breathes again until they’ve left it far, _far_ behind them.

They eventually slow, a peaceful quiet falling over the roads around them once more.

Even without the threat of a machine attacking them, neither of them make an effort to speak. At the moment, neither has anything to say. Sherlock doesn’t mind. It’s nice, soothing somehow, after that brief scare. And there’s very little that could be patrolling this road that they wouldn’t be able to see coming and avoid or that Sebastian, only visible from the claw-prints he leaves in the dirt, wouldn’t be able to deal with. It’s easier to let his mind flow through his research, his work, the journey to come. The striders need very little instruction to continue on and the hallways of his mind provide more useful information than the cottontails and quail that occasionally dart into and then out of their path.

They reach a tiny outpost just after noon, just as the heat’s beginning to surmount the label of “uncomfortable” for something far worse. For the most part, Sherlock’s blatantly Carja dress has been useful to them on journeys—a Carja in Carja lands is forgettable enough and, outside of it, he looks harmless enough for them to be left alone. _Here_ , it does nothing. The soldiers are suspicious, distrustful and clearly wanting to be rid of them. It takes Sherlock just under four seconds to realise it’s because of Jim—even with Sebastian hidden from view, even with the novelty of someone riding a machine, he’s still a very heavily-armed Banuk who isn’t at all trying to hide his amusement at the soldier’s suffering—and it changes Sherlock’s assumptions of why they were posted here immediately. This isn’t a position of trust, this is an act of punishment. Which means these men must have been accused of participating in the Red Raids under the last Sun-King—they’ve been accused of murder, torture, rape, theft, or enslaving others, assisting in their former King’s attempted genocide—but there isn’t enough evidence to send them to prison. Sherlock estimates a very small chance that the soldiers will attack them. Not likely enough to be concerned about, but worthy of consideration. He doubts they’ll ignore Sun-King Avad’s orders to make peace with other tribesmen, but some of their supplies look too fresh and too likely gained from someone or somewhere else to not make him frown a little. It’s not a comfortable prospect and it’s almost a relief when the soldiers refuse to let them rest out of the sun for a few hours.

They’re allowed to wait against the back wall of the outpost, near enough that rest, in theory, might be safe. It’s a decent spot, Sherlock decides. Facing due North, they’re shielded from the afternoon sun by the overhang of the stone walls even before they’ve propped up one of their thinner blankets to serve as additional shade. A river flows lazily to their right, chattering gently in contrast to the occasional outbursts of phainopepla and thresher songs amid the drying nearby trees. The striders are left beside the road, oblivious to all that surrounds them; Sebastian doesn’t disengage his stealth generator until they’re properly secluded, curling up comfortably beside Jim as if to nap.

It seems almost a waste to spend the afternoon like this instead of travelling, but the sun is brutal at the time of year and neither of them need sunstroke. Besides, Jim has a theory about something called Odyssey (a reference they found in some of the Old Ones files—a ship that they’d hoped would sail into the sky and eventually reach another world) and Sherlock will never be capable of telling Jim not to talk about something he’s fascinated by. Nor will he keep himself from enjoying the small spark of light the subject brings to Jim’s eyes or how animated his face, his gestures, that part of him that constantly craves something new, becomes as he speaks. The faint smiles, the wistful tilt to his voice. Beautiful in a way Sherlock rarely will admit to.

(And, if the outpost was to turn and attack them _now_ , he doesn’t think he’d be opposed to a bit of treason just for the chance to eventually see Jim smile like that again.)

A soldier approaches the make-shift tent a couple hours later, contrite enough for them to entertain the idea of a trade and for Sherlock to consider leaving the comfortable shade. He needs remedies for burns and for the chillwater glinthawks use to defend themselves. Sherlock’s always found making potions and poultices a fascinating endeavour—taking a handful of ingredients or chemicals and making something different is easily occupying. But, despite JOHN’s useful medical advice, he’s not a healer; he’s a hobbiest. And there’s a _risk_ to that fact and how little he knows on the subject. (Even if no one’s died from something he’s concocted. Well...not on accident, at least.) In the end, the soldier trades them three oranges, four ears of corn, an entire dried trout, and a bucket of well water for the remedies he needs and an extra handful of dried wildember.

“You’re learning,” Jim observes, teasing, as Sherlock sits back down.

Sherlock simply rolls his eyes and tosses the oranges into his lap.

They stay there, eating oranges and debating zygotes and the effectiveness of space travel for both storage and potential growth, until the air starts to cool and the sun dips down toward the horizon. They’re both aware their knowledge is flawed—small, incomplete fragments that pale in comparison to what the truth probably actually was. But their fingers are sticky-sweet with fruit juice and part of the fun is letting a serious debate dissolve into ridiculous theories that could never, even in the most improbable of circumstances, actually happen.

The red-rocked cliffs nearby are stained copper by the time they refill their water skins, have a quick rinse, and get on the road again. Shadows have begun pooling in the wheel ruts in the road. There’s only four hours left of daylight for them to travel by.

Jim is still attempting to make a point as they ride on, eventually crossing the river. It’s too hot for the water to even attempt to be refreshing—bath water warm and frothing around the striders’ legs. Sebastian vanishes again as they reach the other side, damp dust the only sign of his passing. A herd of striders meander about on the previous bank, easily assumed to be grazing if striders actually possessed a mouth. Sherlock allows a single thought on what, exactly, the striders might really be doing before turning his attention back to the dusty road.

The Dimmed Bones, an enormous ridge of rock crowned in rings of ancient, rusted metal, looms above them like a sentinel; too near and too far all at once. As the sky begins to fade into a pastel dusk, it’s reduced to an ominous silhouette of black and grey. They follow the river into shadow, conversation slowly dying. This is dangerous territory—they’re approaching limestone cliffs and rocky crags; an abundance of places to fall or for machines and bandits to hide in. Risky at this hour, even if it’s not something he’s inclined to usually be concerned about.

_> Make camp?_

He types the message into his Focus and sends it. Jim immediately glances toward him. A picture follows—red-rock walls and a small cave at the top of a steep, boulder-ridden incline. Safe enough, provided nothing’s hiding inside. He nods his agreement and continues following Jim.

* * *

It’s dark and the Sun Priests are singing their final hymn of the day—beseeching the Shadow to return the Sun to them in the morning. Their voices rise and fall in perfect harmony, drifting through Meridian’s streets in a gentle, eerie wave. A small part of Sherlock—the part that appreciates aestheticism and how the hymn merges with the sound of running water and rustling plants from his family’s terrace—still finds it beautiful. Another part of him wishes they would stop with cynical annoyance.

Sherlock sets a thick-walled bottle down too hard, inadvertently rattling some of the smaller vials and machine parts he’s been working with. He’s not certain what’s wrong with him, it’s just...what happens sometimes. An inexplicable sullenness that falls over him every so often. And Sherlock has nothing and no one around to take his mind off it—his parents are away, his brother’s working, and Jim… His gaze flickers in the direction of the day bed above him.

_The air was too hot, leeching life from the city as it rustled the herbs in the window and the thin curtains surrounding the bed; wavering the dappled shadows of several nearby plants at the corners of his vision. Jim sprawled atop the mattress, languid and dazed. Accidentally sending a stack of tomes tumbling to the floor as his heel lost purchase against the sheets. Fingers tight in Sherlock’s curls. Heavy on Sherlock’s tongue and moaning blasphemies into the golden sunlight as his hips jutted, struggling to get more friction from Sherlock’s slowly teasing mouth._

A slightly regretful pang tugs at him. Jim left hours ago, unwilling to linger in Meridian with the growing travel restrictions—Sherlock can’t fault him, not really, if only because he feels similarly. The Sun-King’s been getting worse; calling for destruction, calling for more blood. It might be logical to get out while they still can and return when it’s safe. And if Jim were to slip up, not keep covered in public, accidentally reveal he’s not a Carja...Sherlock doesn’t want to think about it. But it _does_ make his tower bleak without him there. The world is too slow, too dim, without Jim’s blade-keen wit and tendency for horrid puns nearby.

Sherlock potters about, putting his lab to rights for tomorrow morning’s potential experiments and making his final notes for the day. He tries not to glance at the chessboard they’d made (a year ago? Two? Time seems to move differently when they’re together and apart) and he puts on a kettle for tea instead. Nibbles some bread he’d intended to eat hours ago. His tower feels too empty, too lonely, for missing possibilities and sentiment.

He puts out the lamps before he clambers up the ladder to his bed and uses a small pulley to retrieve his tea. Takes his time settling in. The window over the bed is open, allowing vaguely cool air into the space; in the day it’s an eerie view—a reddish ridge of distant cliffs and a large expanse of rainforest beneath both of them, a constantly rippling sea of a thousand shades of green, hiding anything that could be lurking in it from view—but at night all he can see is darkness and stars and the fires of distant outposts. When he was a child, Sherlock liked to imagine that this was what sailing on a ship was like: a small, safe space surrounded by deep nothingness in which countless mysteries and horrors may lie. Of course, he’d made that assumption long before he’d been aware of snapmaws, the long-dead alligators that had inspired them, and their tendency to bite cleanly through anything that happened to swim through their territory. It’s slightly less soothing of a thought these days.

The Sun-Priests gradually end their hymn and he’s free to curl up under the blankets and continue working.

He and JOHN have been working on a project when his work gets slow and there’s nothing to occupy him. Penicillin. It’s not the first time he and JOHN have visited the subject of antibiotics and vaccines, but it _is_ something they’ve both agreed may be important to his work. JOHN, initially created as a medical AI and resource until he accidentally surpassed the bounds of his programming, has ample information on almost anything Sherlock can think of within his field. Unfortunately, JOHN has limited means of sharing that information. A Focus doesn’t have the operating power to run the simulations necessary for teaching and condensing the data files, adding in any additional information Sherlock might need to understand things that were commonplace for the Old Ones, is proving tedious. Reading through what he can find of medical journals occasionally helps, but it’s dry. He doesn’t have more than an exceptionally vague interest in the majority of them. But it’s more than sitting around, waiting for something to happen.

Prodding JOHN awake, Sherlock takes his time scrolling through his Focus’s holographic display. Sips his tea placidly. JOHN’s greeting flashes across the side of his display and, upon realisation that Sherlock isn’t travelling, a reminder of where they left off follows it. Sherlock barely notices him. His thoughts aren’t entirely present tonight, settling at a distance far from him. He wonders if this is what obsession is: buzzing thoughts and his mind constantly returning to what he doesn’t have.

 **Do you actually trust him?** JOHN asks, correctly guessing at Sherlock’s thought process when he takes too long to respond. The words seem slightly bitter. Borderline accusational.

But JOHN and Jim have never been able to do more than tolerate each other from a distance and this discussion isn’t one he wants to have right now. He’s not certain he even knows how to answer him.

“Were we finished with Marks? I seem to remember we’d decided clostridium was to be next.”

JOHN says nothing for a moment while Sherlock makes a show of checking his archived notes. It’s only when it’s obvious that Sherlock’s ignoring the question that he finally concurs and highlights the proper file for him. No, some things don’t need to be discussed. Not now.

* * *

Sleep doesn’t come easily. The wind howls in the canyon, moaning a lament through the narrow opening of the cave they’ve chosen to take shelter in. The _click_ and scrape of Sebastian’s claws are too loud as he patrols. The temperature isn’t much better than it had been when the sun was up. Sherlock dozes fitfully despite it—first with Jim pressed, too-warm, against his back, then alone, curled into the smallest ball he can manage. At one point he wakes to find his head against Jim’s chest, his fingers absently, gently, playing with Sherlock’s curls as he murmurs against his temple. His dreams don’t offer respite, showing him familiar strangers. A rooftop, a gun. A city; a waterfall. The strange sensation that he’s been falling, forever now, with no ground in sight. When he wakes briefly in the dead of night, the darkness is near-absolute and it’s to the feeling of eyes on him, crawling beneath his skin.

The morning, when he finally opens his bleary eyes to it, is murky and clings too closely to him—like a residue that should’ve washed off by now. Jim's half-dressed, the cables in his arms casting a sickly blue glow around him, and frowning at a little handheld screen in the cave's mouth, clearly not in the mood to talk. Beyond him, Sherlock sees a nearly-colourless pale sky dotted with clouds and rust-coloured cliffs slowly rising into looming, snow-capped mountains. They're late today.

Ignoring the little bit of breakfast waiting for him, Sherlock hurries to get dressed. The plan was to reach the Unflinching Watch, a guard post in the North of Carja territory, by midday but that doesn’t seem probable. It’s not too far, but the terrain will be rough and they need to make up for lost time. It’s odd that Jim didn’t wake him, however. Whichever of them wakes first usually prods the other awake soon after. _Did something happen?_

“Something killed the striders last night,” Jim murmurs without prompting. He doesn’t look at Sherlock, but he nudges the food in Sherlock’s direction, an unspoken insistence to eat.

Sherlock does and tastes nothing. Without the striders they’re left wandering on foot; they have less of a chance of outrunning threats. It’s workable, of course, but it doesn’t make the thought an enjoyable one.

“ _Move_ ,” he snaps at Sebastian, waving him away from their packs in effort to finish getting ready.

Hardly anything remains of the striders; twisted, useless metal and a shattered container of blaze, staining the ground around it a slightly darker hue. By the time they return to the dusty road, the sun is glaring down on them, stifling the air and shimmering bands of heat just over the cracked, stone-littered path. Sebastian prowls along beside them, barely visible above the knee-high grass. There isn’t a breeze to speak of. Nor any words to share—this is dangerous territory, good for bandits and scavenging machines and little else. Though they can occasionally keep close enough to Sebastian to make use of his stealth generator, it won’t hide them if another machine comes along; neither will it help if anyone spots their shadows. It’s smarter to move quietly and to keep alert.

A herd of broadheads graze placidly on the dry grass a couple dozen yards off the road, their wide, U-shaped horns glinting in the sunlight, exhausts huffing as they stamp and scrape at the ground. Sherlock casts Jim a questioning glance and is met by a minute shake of his head. He can’t help but silently agree. The machines might be able to support their weight, but being chased and trampled is not on either of their lists of priorities.

The air feels heavier as they walk, tugging at them, pressing down as if to flatten them into the barren landscape. Sherlock doesn’t think the heat is comparable to an oven—an oven is tolerable to be around, at least for a while. It’s more like a kiln. Oppressively drying, pulling every shred of moisture from the land until nothing remains but a husk. Until the plants die and skin thickens and cracks, but can’t bleed. There isn’t enough moisture in the air for it to bleed. They pass water skins between them, taking only a sip at a time. Sherlock’s grateful when the breeze picks up, going from non-existent to negligible; it cools the sweat caught in the base of his curls, the hollow of his throat, and keeps his clothes from sticking to him. To his credit, Jim manages to keep from looking blatantly miserable under the sun’s assault and Sherlock can’t help but wonder how different he finds traversing a desert to clambering over a glacier. It’s a similar, though opposing, type of agony, isn’t it?

He nearly asks, curious enough to break the prolonged silence, when Sebastian abruptly freezes, head cocked a little to one side. His tail swishes gently. Questioningly. Jim drops to a crouch beside him, following his gaze; Sherlock only does the same out of habit. Something isn’t right. Sebastian lets out a low, whirring hum; shifts his weight. And Jim rests a hand on his haunch, imperceptibly flinching at the overwarm metal. It isn’t meant to be soothing—Sebastian’s programming isn’t complex enough to manufacture genuine emotions, he isn’t an AI—but it seems to settle him. Intrigued, Sherlock activates his Focus.

They have a problem.

Far to their right, a limestone mesa rises above the sea of red rock, a path gouged through the centre after centuries of rough weather. A machine prowls along the path's entrance—cat-like, but thrice as big as Sebastian; the vibrant orange cannon on its back, slowly rotating in search of prey, makes Sebastian's dart-gun look like a flimsy toy. It’s not as though either of them _forgot_ ravagers tend to frequent inhospitable locations. It’s rare to run into one. There’s _two_ more behind the ravager at the head of the path. Fortunately, they don’t need to go that way. (But it won’t matter if one of the ravagers detects Sebastian or sees them; there won’t be much left of them if they get hit by those cannons.)

“Left,” Jim whispers, nearly inaudibly. “Keep low. _Try_ not to blow anything up.”

Sherlock's already moving, feeling a surge of childish chagrin. “You’re one to talk.”

The smile he receives in turn is too innocent to be genuine.

They slip further away, into taller grass and, they hope, out of sight. Sebastian lingers behind them, watching the road until they're obscured from the ravagers’ views by a cluster of spindly rock outcroppings. Neither of them drop their guard—the ravagers could easily follow without knowing they’re there—but they breathe easier. Walk faster. Encourage Sebastian to keep closer; if they’re attacked from behind, there’s very little they can do beyond running.

As the sun steadily ascends higher into the sky, they slowly become aware of a tower and a walled fortress nestled amongst some hills on the horizon. It's only a hazy suggestion of where they’re headed, but it makes a reliable marker. They stop once for water and a brief rest over the next hour, the Watch seemingly no closer than it had been. The heat is getting worse.

**_> Play?_ **

Sherlock raises a brow at the message as it flits across his Focus’s display. He gestures to the rock surrounding them as he offers Jim a light half-smile. “While we run the risk of peril from any direction?”

“Is there any better time to play?”

_No, there isn’t._

He keeps one eye on the chess game unfolding on his display and another on the environment as they walk, the rocks slowly receding once more. An odd yellow tinge slowly consumes the sky as they walk; it doesn’t bode well. Nor does the steady rise of the breeze around them. The air quality drops by the time Sherlock reaches his fourth checkmate in a row—that is to say, by the fourth time Jim utterly destroys him—dust filling the air, coating their tongues and the backs of their throats until they’re forced to cover up against the worsening sandstorm and put an end to their games. With so little to be heard over the crash and roar of the wind, they take a chance and run. The Watch isn’t more than an hour or two away and there’s nowhere to hide from the storm. He keeps Jim and Sebastian tagged on his Focus, little blips on the display so he can’t lose sight of them, and hopes they don't run straight into a bandit clan or a very territorial machine.

By the time they reach the river at the base of the hills, they’re covered in a thick layer of grit and have seen nothing more threatening than a somehow lost-looking broadhead, standing alone in the open.

They stumble onwards, squinting through the murky haze, river water coating up to their knees in gritty mud. Half-blind, it's only Jim’s quick hand on his elbow that keeps Sherlock from wandering down the wrong path. Jim gestures Sebastian off, through a break in the rocks lining the hill’s incline; a moment later, Sebastian’s stealth generator activates as he slinks away. They see no one as they approach. What little they can see of the Watch’s structure is obviously Carja in make, but it’s quiet. _Still_. Sherlock isn’t certain if that's how it’s _meant_ to look or if something is wrong...or perhaps if the guard is merely hiding from the storm. They exchange looks; they can’t stay out here all day. With a shrug, Jim pounds on the door.

“ _By the Sun_ , what do you _want_?!” a voice calls down from the battlements.

They look up to find a soldier in dark armour staring aghast at them; a shadowy blur behind a veil of sand.

“Temporary shelter,” Sherlock calls back. Ducks his head against the sand stinging his eyes. If they’d just _open the damned door_....

“We’re not an inn! You’ll get nothing here. _Go away!_ ”

“We’ll trade your captain for it,” Jim replies, barely audible over the wind.

At first it seems as though the soldier hasn’t heard it, but soon they can hear annoyed grumbling growing closer.

“We have nothing to trade,” Sherlock hisses to Jim, alarmed. He has some extra medicinal supplies and they have enough food to get them to their destination and back, but they don’t have anything resembling a notable surplus. Jim might have a talent for talking his way out of difficult situations, but there _are_ limits. Speaking to the watch captain might only gain them a couple minutes reprieve from the storm.

From behind the scarf he’s covered his face with, Jim seems to be smiling.

The doors slowly open, just enough for them to be reluctantly admitted before they’re closed again. The courtyard is tidy stone, barren of anything growing, but enough protection from the wind at this angle to be a relief. Sherlock waits for Jim to produce something that’ll make the soldiers decide to let them stay a while. (He wouldn’t be so bold as to threaten them with Sebastian, would he? It might have some effect, but it doesn’t seem like Jim’s style.) But all that happens is that they’re allowed a minute to shake the sand away and uncover their faces before Sherlock’s ordered to stay put. Jim’s led away, presumably to the watch captain, without a backward glance.

Sherlock glances around awkwardly. He’s never been good at staying in one place _or_ doing what he’s told; fidgeting and wandering are the least offensive responses he can usually manage to either instruction. He elects to study the courtyard, aware he’s being watched. It’s tidy enough, sturdily built and in better shape than the last outpost they visited. It would take a thunderjaw, or a behemoth, to raze the buildings. He drops his gaze. They don’t appear to get many visitors—it’s been nearly a month since the last grooves of what might have been a cargo delivery were made in the stone floor. Rations must be getting low. If he’d had the foresight, and the sandstorm hadn’t sprung up, he could’ve looked for a boar or a couple turkeys; surely those might have bought their way in.

His gaze lands on an equally awkward-looking soldier and Sherlock feels himself pause. _Ah_. Another potential problem. Midnight-coloured armour and a dark, hawk-like mask; the soldier has talons on his sandals. This is a Shadow Carja outpost then. Home to “heretics who spurned the true Sun-King for his mad father”, as some of the clergy occasionally squawk in Meridian; “those who supported murder, slavery, and genocide under the guise of holy righteousness before they split the kingdom in two” is how Sherlock would generally describe them. The Red Raids are long over; both halves of the kingdom are meant to be holding a truce, though that means little. Sherlock wonders how long it’ll be before one of the soldiers realises that the dark hues of his own clothing are a fashion choice and not an expression of religious and political view. His stomach twists and he considers the merits of camping on the side of the road until the storm passes.

“ _You_ ,” the soldier that led Jim off barks, returning. “Follow.”

The desire to be contrary tugs at him, but logic wins out, prompting him along. He’s led up a short set of worn stone steps and around the edge of the outpost. Sherlock only briefly hesitates before stepping through the creaky wooden door he’s directed to. The soldier nods to the stairs across from the door before closing him in. It’s a barren room—a few barrels and crates have been left pitifully under the wooden stairs and a dim lamp made of hobbled together machine parts casts a sallow light from where it hangs on the wall, illuminating a rickety table and a handful of mismatched chairs.

Sherlock makes his way up the stairs, habitually walking carefully with the intent of keeping quiet. It would be reasonable to think everything was fine, but he doesn't know what's waiting for him at the top. Danger? Nothing? Hopefully Jim. He doesn’t trust these people with him. Not because Jim’s fragile or something equally nonsensical, but because the Carja had happily taken people from every tribe, including the Banuk, under the rule of the former king and he doesn’t know what those who still followed him would do if Jim got on their bad side. He imagines death would be the kindest of their responses.

The wind is louder when he reaches the first landing, complaining without pause. Sherlock ignores it. The stairs continue up, presumably to some eventual roof access, but he stops to glance into the only door off the landing. It’s sparsely filled—there are no rugs or decorative items beyond a wooden screen near the far end of the small room. The windows are narrow but the few oil lamps dotted around the room give off enough light to spot a pair of low beds, a small table, and an unused fireplace, empty of wood for burning. For visitors, perhaps, or for higher-ranking members in the Shadow Carja’s army.

“We can stay as long as we need,” Jim tells him from behind the screen.

Sherlock adds a wash area to his mental map and steps inside, letting the door swing closed behind him. He’s not comfortable with this. Staying here doesn’t seem like one of their better, well-thought out ideas. But it is the best option available in current circumstances and he can't deny that.

He drops his pack beside Jim’s on one of the cots. Pauses. There’s always been a string of deep blue crystals dangling from Jim’s pack, a pretty relic from before they met, but one of the bluegleam seems to be missing. Just one. _Strange_. “What did you do?”

“Can’t you deduce it?”

He can. It’s not something that requires much thought—Jim is good at figuring out what people want and using it. He’s not certain how that might have worked in this situation, though. Whatever these soldiers might ask for, he doubts they have it. “What did they want?”

“Does it matter?”

He shrugs, more passive aggressive than he'd like to be. It doesn't, but that's not really the point he's struggling to word. “Presumably not, provided they don’t decide to kill us.”

Jim steps out, half-dressed and clearly in the midst of trying to wash some of the sand off, from behind the screen, staring impassively at him. Sherlock stares back, refusing to look away even if it means Jim will see every thought in his head laid out before him.

“You’re worried.”

“No,” Sherlock lies immediately.

There’s a long pause as Jim processes, lashes wavering once as though he’s reading too fast, before a disbelieving smile begins to tug at the corners of Jim’s mouth. “About me. You’re worried about me?” He sounds like he doesn’t know whether to be delighted or annoyed by the thought. “That’s so _stupid_ ,” he adds, almost affectionately. Sherlock’s expression flattens and Jim amends, “How are you still so adorable?”

Sherlock scoffs, frowning in earnest now. He pushes past him with the intent of washing up as well. He knows it’s ridiculous; he knows that caring for Jim is a fickle thing, regardless of what form it may take each day, varying frequently with the vagrancies of their moods. But he’s not in the mood to be teased, even affectionately. And it’s surprising to realise that there is a genuine fear behind that frustration—one he’s never allowed himself to linger over. Sherlock’s fully committed to the idea of sulking until they’re travelling again, but Jim catches his arm as he tries to slip past. Carefully pulls him back. Guides him down, hands on his cheeks, until they’re resting against each other, temple to temple. Sherlock sighs, tension sagging from his shoulders.

For a long moment, neither of them move. Just breathe. Slowly. He isn’t sure when his hands find Jim’s waist, just that soon his fingers are twisted in the loose fabric there and he can’t let go.

“You know me,” Jim murmurs in breath against his cheekbone. There’s a weight to the words; too many layers and unspoken truths for anything more verbose.

Sherlock isn’t sure what the twinge he feels in his gut means. He does. In more ways than anyone could fathom—like a deep ache throbbing in his marrow; always there, always a part of him. “Yes.”

But he’s also certain he’s too selfish to run the risk of giving Jim up. He doesn’t want to lose him. Not yet.

They can worry about the Shadow Carja later. For the moment, they have nothing to worry about but each other.

* * *

“Tell me about your people,” Sherlock enquires as he cleans a gash on his arm. He’s never asked Jim about his family, where he’s come from and how he got here, before. But then they’ve never gotten caught between a squadron of Carja soldiers and a trio of escaped Banuk slaves before. He’s never seen Jim fight with an actual weapon before. He’s never seen the way the Banuk looked at Jim when they were safe, as if the situation were infinitely worse now, or how Jim’s smile had gone odd when they’d parted ways—knife-sharp and suggestive in a way Sherlock wouldn’t normally attribute to the word. As though Jim was implying both a playful innocence _and_ the inference that whatever the Banuk were so concerned about was entirely true.

“I don’t _have_ people, Sherlock,” Jim chides. Sebastian lost his tail in the fight—not an accidental victim of the EMP Sherlock hadn’t been aware Jim’s spear could do but a purposeful one of a Carja soldier’s halberd. He’s been sulking ever since they found shelter from the rain, hours ago now, while Jim wires a replacement tail (necessary if they ever want Sebastian to fight in close quarters again) into place. “You _know_ that.”

“You _had_ them.”

“So what? What does it matter?”

“They’re afraid of you.”

Jim doesn’t answer.

Repressing a sigh, Sherlock takes his bowl of dirty water and steps outside. It’s still raining, chattering through the rainforest’s thick canopy of leaves. Everything is tinged with a hue of grey-green—the air, the foliage, the dim moonlight where it can press between the leaves in a pale glow. They’ve elected to camp off the road tonight in a close-growing copse of moss-covered and vine-choked trees, close enough to a river to make up for the fire they can’t currently have. He picks his way through the undergrowth, occasionally buffeted by large, waxy leaves. Sherlock pours out the dirty water into a clump of bromeliads and takes a seat on a rock at the river’s edge to refill the bowl. The stitches he’s given himself at JOHN’s direction are clumsy, but functional. It hurts (now, he’s aware, would be a good chance to test a poultice he’d experimented with ages ago), but it’s not enough to distract the disappointment weighing on his thoughts.

Despite his lack of questions, he’s always been curious of Jim. He wants to know him with the same absolute certainty that he knows himself. Withholding his questions was an attempt at respecting his boundaries and need for privacy; it had never been a sign of a lack of interest. But sometimes it feels like Jim doesn’t _want_ to be known. Like he values secrecy more than anything else. And that...bothers him. And he isn’t certain why—isn’t certain he _wants_ to know why.

“I’d say you're not getting it, but I realise I haven’t explained,” Jim says when Sherlock returns, still focused on wiring.

Sherlock actively stamps down on the desire to push for information as he settles into his cot, shoving his rain-soaked curls out of his face. He allows Jim his silence when he fails to elaborate. Waits. Focuses on cleaning the rest of the half-dried blood and mud from his skin, ignoring how anticipation prickles down his spine.

It feels like an hour has passed before Jim finally adds: "I was exiled."

For a moment, all Sherlock can do is blink at him. He’d always assumed Jim’s wandering was a choice. A quiet disdain for his tribe and boredom for his life that provoked him into leaving in hopes of something different. It hadn’t crossed his mind that it could be punishment for something. “Your tribe is afraid of you because they cast you out?”

Jim smiles derisively as he solders something into place. “The werak cast me out _because_ they’re afraid of me.”

Sherlock mulls over his words, considering the implications, and tosses what remains of his bowl of water outside their shelter. He’s heard stories about how the Banuk exile their own—that the reasons are severe and that, occasionally, they are allowed to return if the circumstances (whatever those may be, he doesn’t know) are correct. And he’s aware that the only thing the Banuk value above their songs and stories is the strength, mentally and physically, to survive. For Jim to have single-handedly survived his exile and for that fact to have earned fear beyond—what term did Jim use? Werak? Was that like the Oseram’s clans or a Carja town?—those that had known him before... “They think you’re dead.”

The way Jim’s expression minutely shifts confirms it. “They _hope_ I’m dead.”

But the only difference between thinking and hoping someone might be dead is the fear of what will happen if they return. “What do they think you’ll do to them?”

“ _Eeeehh_.” Jim rolls his eyes, expression scrunching in a childish display of condescension and mockery, and wiggles his hand in Sherlock's direction before fitting a bit of plating onto Sebastian’s haunch. “Revenge myself with an army of angry spirits sent to devour them.”

Again, Sherlock finds himself speechless, unable to do more than stare at him. He weighs the notion against what he knows of Jim and his temperament and how he tends to handle problems. “That’s an idiotic assumption.”

“It is,” Jim agrees brightly. But his expression says he doesn’t mind them terrifying themselves with the thought.

* * *

The temperature plummets at an alarming rate as they climb in elevation, slowly leaving the desert and its endless cacti and sagebrush behind for towering pines and flower-dotted grasslands. The roads are easier to follow, bare of all but the most determined plants—they don’t take the roads, sticking instead to the cover of trees and heavy foliage. There’s a bandit settlement near here and they tend to shoot first and rob corpses after. Machine convoys also frequent these roads, focused on some unfathomable task. Neither option is one they’re interested in being caught by. For two days they travel on minimal rest, moving carefully. Sebastian keeps constant lookout, slinking through spindly vervain and vividly yellow butterweed with more grace than either Jim or Sherlock can manage and clinging to the sides of trees as easily as he does sandstone, though he discovers nothing more threatening than an outraged squirrel. (It takes nearly half an hour to coax him away from the tree and Sebastian protests the entire time, but they _do_ manage to get him to move in the end. Sherlock would consider it a victory if he hadn’t been preoccupied with exasperation at the time.)

Gradually, the ground grows steep. Boulders the size of houses block what had previously looked like an easy route and they’re forced to inch along precarious ledges with only a smattering of columbine and rockcress to watch their passage. On the third morning they relent and retrieve the coats from their packs—or, to be more accurate, Sherlock burrows into his coat in silent protest of both the growing crispness of the air and Jim’s apparent lack of awareness of it. His silent protest becomes slightly _less_ silent when, by late evening, they discover snow and Jim is still unconcerned. It’s not fair. He almost suspects Jim’s doing it on purpose to tease him.

“Ban-Ur has the opposite climate to Meridian,” Jim reminds him once they’ve decided to set up camp for the night. A fire and a comfortable shelter feel like a risky luxury, but they’re isolated here, far away from anyone or thing, and it’s a relief to get warm.

Sherlock frowns over a cup of soup, grumpy. “You don’t feel the slightest bit cold?”

Jim’s only response is to smile enigmatically at him. But he curls closer to him than usual when they go to bed, tucked under Sherlock’s chin as though pressing for whatever warmth he can get.

They wake to a heavy snowfall and a thick fog that make Sherlock’s nose and fingertips feel shrivelled and numb. He grumbles as he tugs on more layers—thick water-resistant hides and furs over the linen and silk of his customary garb. He hardly notices how silly his hat looks once it’s started warming his ears. Jim’s only concern seems to be the fog—they have a six hour hike down into one of the range’s valleys ahead of them and the sun hasn’t yet risen beyond the edge of the horizon; falling off a cliff is not a welcome notion.

Shivering, teeth clenched against the chill, they make their way down the rocky incline. If either of them expect the storm to die out as they walk, they’re sorely mistaken. The wind picks up, lashing frost against them. Stinging at exposed skin. Jim keeps a couple yards ahead of him, traversing the snow and rock with ease as Sherlock is left slipping and stumbling over half-hidden logs and patches of ice. Sebastian ambles along in wide arcs around them, eternally on guard; the only one that can see more than thirty or so feet around them. His sensors cast an eerie blue glow on the snow before him—a temporary beacon through the raging storm that only lasts until he freezes, picking up on something they can’t see or hear. A moment later they’re left to a bone-white snow haze as his stealth generator thrums on.

Jim stops, waiting. And Sherlock stops when he reaches him, activating his Focus. Nothing. Or...nothing he can _see_. His breath feels sharp, like swallowing a serrated blade, and standing still as the wind howls isn’t making the temperature easier to tolerate.

Sebastian slinks back into view a minute later, tail swishing in something like annoyance. As they stumble back into movement, Sherlock types a message into his Focus.

_> Is it an army of squirrels?_

Jim’s answering snicker is almost lost to the wind.

Legs aching, they eventually reach the valley. Not that it’s very obvious: they can see a handful of nearby trees but nothing more. Sherlock isn’t even certain if the sun’s risen yet. They keep their heads bowed, the snow is constant, aggravating and inescapable, and are forced to follow Sebastian as Jim feeds him where they need to be via his Focus. (And a distant part of Sherlock finds that funny, really, because there are stories in both Carja and Banuk legend of people following machines through storms, to safe places. He’d just always assumed it was unlikely until he’d met Jim all those years ago.)

Strange metal shapes begin to loom through the gloom: thick, rusted slabs of steel supported by wheels encased in strips of metal, twin arms reaching forward like a puppet held aloft. There’s a lot of them, abandoned to the ice and elements. Sherlock’s Focus flashes a model number at him, but there aren’t any accompanying schematics, pictures, or explanations and so he discards it. The sentinels don’t care about their presence.

The broken corpses of ancient buildings rise up at the very edges of their field of vision, reduced to hollow framework and crumbled stone. Vacant and ineffective. The wind sounds eerie as it blows through the gaps of former walls, wailing. They crunch through the snow, Sebastian’s blue light the only constant in the disorientating whiteness. Every so often a singular metal beam or a bit of rusted framework creeps into view, only to be swallowed by the storm. Sebastian comes to a stop before a wall that, to Sherlock’s eyes, all but appears from nothingness; swishes his tail, sits, and then gets to his feet to pace. It's been gouged open, by time and, perhaps, other, less objective things. Whatever was originally behind it has been partially caved in. They creep through irregardless, and find themselves in an entrance hall of sorts, empty and echoing. Calthemite stalactites and stalagmites stand in silent guard around the room, occasionally dripping with meltwater where they’ve formed over old powerlines. A handful of rats scurry away over lichen and moss, frantically squeaking, as Jim winds through the deposits, leaving Sherlock behind to stand before an enormous, solid arch in the far wall.

“A door?” Sherlock calls, voice muffled by the wind and his scarf, as he eyes follow the odd seams in the old metal.

Jim studies it a moment or so before agreeing with a nod. “It was shuttered when they left.”

Sherlock takes the opportunity to nose about the hall. There’s some abandoned storage crates and places to sit, calcified with mineral runoff, but nothing of note. The holographic displays no longer work and anything of interest is either non-functioning or buried beneath rubble. Sebastian slinks past him as he returns to Jim, mapping the powerlines with his Focus. They’ve had to manually unlock these types of seals before; it’s never pleasant, but knowing what part of the wall they need to cut into first is usually helpful. It doesn’t keep his attention for long; eventually he finds himself watching Jim work, as quietly fascinated as ever.

He’s just considered standing in front of the door’s bio-scanner, if only to see what it might say, when a crash off to his right shatters the too-still silence. High-pitched, mechanical yowls of despair follow it, echoing despondently. Sherlock huffs a tired sigh, a surge of exasperation nearly forcing his eyes closed. _Damn._

“Go save him, will you?” Jim asks idly, not looking up.

“He’s _your_ pet.”

“You like him too.”

 _I do not_ , Sherlock insists to himself, already skulking off to do as Jim asks. He prefers to think he tolerates Sebastian as one might an annoying younger sibling; _Jim_ is the one with a strange attachment to a stalker, not him. He finds Sebastian among the storage crates, half-sitting in a box that’s clearly too small for him. He lets out a whirring squawk as Sherlock approaches and wiggles, pathetically distraught.

“How do you keep getting stuck in boxes?” Sherlock grumbles, bending down to extricate him. He carefully moves Sebastian’s sensors, giving extra care to avoiding his mine launcher, and eases him out of the box until he’s sulking on all fours again, tail swishing angrily. Sebastian doesn’t linger by him. He hurries over to Jim instead and plops down on the floor behind him. Pouting. Rolling his eyes, Sherlock adds to Jim: “You should check his programming.”

“He’s functioning properly.”

 _Is he?_ But before Sherlock can verbally challenge that notion, the door lights up.

“Genetic profile confirmed,” a synthetic voice haltingly greets from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Entry authorised. Greetings—” a burst of staticky feedback briefly obscures her words— “Please, step inside.”

With much clanking and scraping, the door slides down and open.

He doesn’t ask Jim what he did—Jim will only be smug the rest of the day if he does, and Sherlock still won’t have an answer—but he follows him through the door anyway, Sebastian lurking at their heels. The door bangs shut behind them. It’s dark inside, lit only by broken holographic displays and a single red light running on some form of back-up power. Blessedly, there’s no wind in here and Sherlock is free to pull his scarf down and hat off with minimal consequences. It’s even quieter than the hall. Their breath is too loud, rasping in their ears. Most of this floor has collapsed. Together, they move to find a route to an open floor. It takes a bit of climbing before they drop to the floor below—but then...they knew there wasn’t a chance of them finding ruins that _didn’t_ require some clambering around. It seems stable enough. Cold against his frost-damp hair and stinging cheeks, but unlikely to fall apart as they search.

“This... _information_ ,” Sherlock begins slowly, his voice seeming to carry even at a whisper. He considers a moment before sardonically inclining his head with a low, sharp _tsk_. “Where at?”

Jim stretches, first his neck and then his shoulders. His gaze never seems to stop moving, observing everything. “Top floor.” He pauses, considering, before clearly discarding whatever thought had occurred and adding, “Offices first?”

They may as well. They may not have an opportunity to return and there’s always a chance that Sherlock will find something relevant to his own interests. “Yes; fine.”

They separate, combing through the area with care. There isn’t much for Sherlock to find. Rooms full of tables and chairs, frozen and empty of life. Shattered holographic displays showing a confused splattering of numbers, symbols, and letters. Abandoned laboratories, their equipment broken beyond repair and too odd to use even if trying them was an option. But he finds audio files too, their subjects frozen in time like oblivious ghosts when he gives them a check. Discussions of corporate growth, of coffee and companies at war, and, in the lab, two men having a half-terrified, half-furious conversation about poly-phasic entangled waveforms, quantum encryption to Black Quartz standards, and a rogue swarm of what Sherlock assumes to be robots. Something twists uncomfortably in his gut.

He wanders, attempting to assess the feeling and electing to ignore it when nothing comes of it. It’s eerie, being alone here. He keeps expecting to see someone, _anyone_ , or some form of movement. But nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound.

Sherlock finds Jim in a cylindrical atrium, staring up at a machine he’s never seen before. It resembles the sentinels outside. But bigger, more compact, potentially more mobile. Above its head, a display declares FARO in purple-tinged, teal letters. The machine isn’t functioning; completely frozen, perhaps never having been “alive” at all. He turns his attention to Jim. Though his expression is utterly neutral, Sherlock knows him well enough by now to know he’s thinking. Lost on some avenue of thought inaccessible to anyone else. It doesn’t look enjoyable, however, like he’s taken a wrong turn somewhere. He’s not certain if it’s the right choice, but Sherlock gives him a gentle tap, rousing him into awareness, and makes an effort to sound relaxed.

“Find anything?”

Jim blinks dazedly before shaking his head. “No.”

They pick their way upwards, floor by floor; scaling ancient utility ladders up narrow, vertical tunnels and clinging to railings around the edges of vast drops. The floors themselves have little of interest. A few bits of scrap they can repurpose, the occasional strange object left abandoned by its previous owner, tools that would have been useful when the Old Ones lived. The ever present broken holographic displays cast the rooms and halls into dark expanses of shadow, occasionally punctuated by the fuzzy glow of paling neon blue, pink, or purple. The legion of chairs and tables they find begins to grow uncomfortable half-way up. It feels like the building is waiting for people to return, as if being hollow and empty has left it in a perpetual state of starving hibernation as it waits and waits and longs for what it once had. Sherlock would swear that there are eyes on him, always lingering in the darkest of shadows. But Jim doesn’t seem more on edge than he ever is in a ruin. And Sebastian isn’t acting odder than normal. He tries, and fails, to cast the thought away.

He finds a room with a working holographic theatre and, sparing the back of Jim’s head a contemplative glance, slips away to have a poke around. It’s eerier than the other rooms—the large, vacant space in the centre of the room only serving to heighten his sense of displacement. He tries to ignore the abandoned workstations as he steps up to a display panel. A crackly green activation screen sits before him, flickering like a candle in a storm. Head tilted, Sherlock gives it a prod.

The robot from the atrium appears in the middle of the theatre, parts highlighted with explanations that have long been lost to corrupted data. The name, Faro, sits in the corner in thick, bold letters like an open wound.

“The FSP5 ‘Khopesh’,” a synthetic man’s voice proclaims like a merchant cheerfully hawking his wares, “provides a one-size-fits-all solution to main battle force capability.” As if he’s not discussing an incredibly lethal, mobile weapon, the man keeps talking in pleasant tones about neural networks, threat analysis for “domestic operations”, biomass conversion, and conflict resolution. Alarmed, and feeling slightly ill, Sherlock flounders in search of a button to turn it off. A new robot replaces the previous, spider-like with a long whip-like tail. The diagram seems particularly intent on showcasing it’s mobility and the voice’s audio track doesn’t register anything odd as it immediately shifts onto a new explanation, ever cheerful: “The ACA3 ‘Scarab’ combines conventional and information warfare capabilities in one package. Designed for…”

Behind the alarm, a part of Sherlock is amazed by the voice's ability to speak of a robot’s murderous aptitude, ability to enslave other robots, and skill in a “peacekeeping fleet” in the same bright tones he’s heard people use to describe a new pet.

He manages to find another button, accidentally summoning the image of yet another robot, and freezes. This time, shock settles over his senses. He briefly hears “Horus” and something about a learning machine, but then he hears nothing else. He _recognises_ this machine. He’s seen several of them before. Their limbs longer than a mountain is tall; their city-sized bodies frozen amongst the peaks, still, waiting, looking over everything in its shadow. He’s clambered over their presumed-corpses more than once when they’ve needed to get to isolated places. But he hadn’t thought... No, _no_ , that’s not true. He _had_ made the connection; he’d known precisely what they were, what they’d done, the second he’d first read an article about “the Faro Plague” and the threat of a rogue robotic swarm. He’d known for years now. He just hadn’t wanted to think about it. People always died; there were always more fascinating things to think about than life being snuffed out to fuel a machine. This is, perhaps, the first time it’s made him nauseous to think about it.

Slowly, Sherlock blinks back to awareness, realising the recording has reached its end. Jim stands ten feet away, watching him. His expression is inscrutable; withholding judgment or opinion as he waits. Silence reigns, except for the distant clinking of Sebastian's claws as he paces the outer hall.

“‘ _Peacekeepers’_ ,” is all Sherlock can force out. The stale air is dusty and thick on his tongue, but his disdain is thicker still.

Jim inclines his head and his voice is mercifully even and calm as he says, “Ordinary people enjoy dressing up horror as nobility and violence as honour. You know that, Sherlock; you’ve seen it.”

He has. He saw it with the previous Sun-King—the Red Raids, the sacrifices, the destruction, all marketed under a banner of religious righteousness and divine will. Upheld on punishment of death...or worse. It’s a grounding thought. But it isn’t comforting.

“Did you know?” Sherlock enquires, toneless. _Did you know they killed us? Did you know they were created here? Is this why you wanted to come here?_

Jim studies him. Sherlock knows, by the way his gaze shifts, he's weighing his options. “I had a suspicion,” he replies, sounding truthful. “But—” he pulls a grimace as if to say the idea of him coming here for these robots is stupid and insulting— “they weren’t interesting enough to tempt me.”

Several responses immediately come to mind. Ways to push, prod for more answers. Things that will only make Jim mad or annoyed. He settles for humour instead and tries to mentally shake off the ghosts. “Is anything?”

Jim grins, boyish and pseudo-awkward. “ _Weeeeeell..._ ” Rolling his eyes, he turns back to the hall. “C’mon, then. If we’re not fast, we’ll be climbing in the dark.”

“We’re already climbing in the dark...” But he follows him anyway, eager to leave these machines behind.

They keep moving, finding barely anything. It’s getting colder the higher they get, wind seeping in through cracks in the concrete. Only minimal power still remains at these levels of the building. They stop for a brief rest, passing a half-frozen water skin between them and lingering over a snack, idly warming each other’s hands in between bites of dried boar and bits of conversation. The lack of information isn’t as daunting as Sherlock suspects it ought to be—he’s heard of delvers going years between finds of significant value and he imagines it’s the same for people of his and Jim’s interests. Sometimes one finds a manuscript of cultural significance, or a schematic of great use. Other times, one finds an “HR complaint” (he does _not_ know what this term means) regarding the staff room’s food printer (he has a vague idea of what this is; his Focus directs him to a saved ad for the device in question but all it does is make him fascinated with the Old Ones’ large variety of boxes with too many uses to count) and its inability to provide “croffles” (he doesn’t understand this term either; his Focus’s attempt at a helpful explanation only gives him more questions). No, what’s daunting is the long vertical climb they have ahead of them upon discovering stair access on this floor has caved in.

When they’re ready, Sebastian begins the climb first. He clings easily to the tunnel’s walls, taking full advantage of being outfitted as a machine meant for tactical ambushes as he creeps upward. The men follow with markedly less grace. From what Sherlock can see of the way Jim’s back and arm muscles work through his coat as he moves, he doesn’t seem to be overtly struggling. But the Banuk train to be survivors, masters of self-preservation and enduring their environment, from a very young age; climbing isn’t especially high on Jim’s list of dangerous activities. In contrast, the Carja’s preference for an indolent, usually ground-level lifestyle is not doing Sherlock any favours. Halfway up, he’s feeling grumbly and entirely displeased that the first bit of flooring they can rest on is exposed to the elements and covered in snow. By the time they reach the top, he’s resigned himself to whatever the building has in store for him.

An eerily beautiful view greets them. Thick ivy has grown to choke the dilapidated cement and steel, some of the vines thicker around than Sherlock’s wrist. They’re nearing the summit of the building—high above the storm blanketing the valley, but not high enough to fully escape it. Even with the added heat of exertion, the air has a glass-sharp tang that makes every inhale an annoyance and makes the tips of his fingers feel numb even through his thick gloves. The snow swirls around them in lazy arcs. Sherlock tugs his hat back on—his breath is too light to turn to mist; a quick, unsteady rush that doesn’t quite seem to fill his lungs. He wonders how many hours of daylight they have left. However long they have, he doubts it’s enough time to finish this, get back to the ground, and find a well-hidden place to camp for the evening before nightfall.

The path becomes precipitous. Slick with ice and rusted through in sections; they struggle not to stumble over loose debris and bits of ancient furniture. The dilapidated rooms have begun to vary a little, wider chairs and once-comfortable-looking benches residing along the walls and strange cabinets toppled over like scattered pebbles. When Sherlock takes a peek into one, there’s nothing to be found inside but dust. Sebastian takes the lead as the path narrows, predominantly to avoid him launching himself after them and toppling them off the side of the building in the event of any gaps in the flooring they may need to leap over.

Gaps, however, are the least of their worries.

At times the only way forward is across narrow support beams and up broken pieces of metal plate. Far, far below them is nothing but blank whiteness, mist and fog, the tips of trees peeking out just above the storm; Sherlock isn’t certain whether or not being unable to see the ground is a curse. But the wind is as bad as the vertigo, clawing at them like grasping, jagged hands. By the time they clamber onto a covered expanse of still-standing floor, both of them are damp with melted snow and growing numb with cold.

A desk with a semi-working display sits waiting for them in the next room; “FARO Automated Solutions” emblazoned across the bottom and “executive assistant” sitting primly in an upper corner. It’s frozen in time—a sphere of calls and contacts waiting in one corner, corrupted text boxes littering another. A news feed, blank, and some sort of chart, also blank, have notes about “fiscal year 2065”—a year before the Old Ones vanished. Or...were devoured, Sherlock supposes; became fuel for the weapons they created. He takes some time to study it, trying to rub warmth back into his fingers now that they’re somewhat safe from the cold.

“Get this?” Jim says, not quite asking and not quite focused.

Sherlock has already planned to. “ _Obviously_.”

It takes a moment for him to get past the password, the program fumbling a bit with how much of the local network is either corrupted or non-functional. A lot of the information, once he has access to it, looks boring or useless but he copies it anyway and sticks it in a “To Sort” file for later perusal. In total, the entire process takes maybe fifteen minutes. When he looks up from his work, Jim is gone; his pack sits beside the desk and Sebastian sits beside _it_ , clearly displeased by this development. Sherlock frowns. For a split second, he’s almost worried that Jim’s fallen...but there weren’t any strange sounds and it’s unlikely. And the way they entered is directly in front of where Sherlock was working. Therefore, the only place Jim could’ve gone without being noticed is through a broken bit of panelling in a far wall.

He steps carefully over to it. Looks through it. There’s a ledge and the damage to the wall is just enough that climbing up to the next floor is plausible. He hesitates to join him. Clearly, whatever Jim wanted to do, he wanted to do it alone. And he wouldn’t have left his pack or Sebastian behind if he wasn’t intending on coming back. The desire to be respectful of Jim's boundaries and the desire to know wage war in the back of his head. He decides to leave the choice to Jim.

_> Do you want company?_

He has just enough time to sit down and reopen his file before a reply appears.

**_> No._ **

Sherlock vacillates over whether or not to ignore it and follow Jim. He elects to start going through his files instead. Sorting them without much interest. They are bland, dull, mostly the daily nonsense of no importance except to the people whom had worked here. He finds a handful of interesting messages, code adjustments, and rough schematics buried in the rubbish and sets them aside to share with Jim later. Hardly enough to justify the time spent reading. There’s nothing related to his own studies—and nothing related to the mystery of why they resemble long-dead men. He’s begun to wonder if there’ll ever be answers and if those answers would matter if he ever acquired them. Most likely not. The reasons of the dead shouldn’t matter. They make their own paths, don’t they?

Dusk begins to settle around him, seeping into the cracks of the ruined building. Calthemites have grown in the corner of the ceiling where collapse has exposed utility lines; in the gloom the deposits look like snarling teeth. Lit only by the holographic display, it’s unnerving but...safe. Secluded and secure; even glinthawks would have a difficult time spotting them here. A potentially decent campsite as well, given Jim hasn’t yet returned. He nearly sends him a message. Sebastian catches his eye, his tail fidgeting against the ground, and Sherlock changes his mind. Knowing Jim, he’ll be up there doing...whatever it was Jim did when he went off alone for hours and hours to come. It might be morning by the time he’s ready to return. And Sherlock has been freezing for ages now.

He sets up their tent near the desk, but out of view of the route back down—what seems to be the most structurally secure location in the room—and chances a small fire in the tiny brazier they’d brought along. It’s barely enough to light the area, but it’s instantly more comfortable. Sebastian paces, low mechanical notes occasionally slipping from his processors, as Sherlock settles in at the mouth of the tent. Sherlock _is_ tempted to call it awkward. But he eventually finds himself wrapped up in blankets and work, sipping some rapidly cooling tea, and it’s easy to pretend this is just a normal night, trying not to let idleness consume him. He updates his notes on various locations they’ve visited, listing plants, animals, and machines they’ve found in the region and anything useful or dangerous they've discovered. Eventually he turns to scientific notes; things he’s usually fascinated by. It doesn’t hold his attention. Nor does any other file he has at his disposal.

As the brazier burns low, Sherlock finds his thoughts keep returning to the machines in the theatre. The ability to consume living things as fuel and create more robots at will. Who had thought that was a good idea? Who had thought that wouldn’t eventually backfire horrifically? Someone powerful, he assumes, that hadn’t thought they’d be affected by catastrophe. He’s never thought about the end of the Old Ones’ world before; how it had felt waiting to die, knowing what had caused it and that nothing could be done. While he can logically state the mental and physical reactions a body would have to a large-scale trauma, the actual thoughts involved, the way people would emotionally react, is beyond him. He’s not certain he wants to know. Sherlock shifts uncomfortably in his blankets and rolls onto his side, curling in on himself. The man that had looked like him...had he been alive at the end? He’s never found a date related to his birth or death. He’s never found information beyond articles, a couple archived websites, and a series of stories about his work. If he’d been alive, what had he done in the face of inevitable destruction? Had he met it head-on? Had he fled? He suspects he’ll never know.

He listens to the click of Sebastian’s claws as he patrols, the occasional creaking of his mechanical joints, and the distant groans of the building as it shifts and settles. His thoughts feel aimless, slowly meandering. His mind won’t calm. _Can’t_ calm. Giving in, he flops onto his back. May as well search through his Focus for something to—

A soft scrape outside the tent is the only warning he gets before Jim sneaks in, bringing frigid air with him. He’s shivering. With cold, yes, but with energy as well. Excited, bordering on manic; Sherlock knows the signs well. He sits up, hair a rumpled mess, as Jim sits down.

“What—?”

Sherlock cuts himself off with a groan as Jim does something like pouncing, dropping into Sherlock’s lap and crushing their mouths together. It takes Sherlock a moment to realise he’s being kissed. Jim’s hands clutch at the front of his coat, pulling him down. _What did you find?_ Jim’s lips slide rough against his own, fervently demanding more. Teasing at his lips with the briefest brush of his tongue as Sherlock’s hands find his hair. Tangled in him— _he’s half frozen_ , he can’t help but think again, alarmed—and keeping him close. Instinctively, habitually, responding desperately in kind. Tugging at Jim’s lips with his teeth to coax a groan from him; breath escaping him as Jim laps into his mouth. Jim grinds his hips down. Slowly. Taunting him with pressure Sherlock’s only just become aware he wants.

“ _What_ did you find?” Sherlock manages to ask, incredulously, around his shuddering breath.

“Later.”

Jim’s hands are busy with the front of his coat as Sherlock scrapes kisses against his jaw. Nips down his neck to suck a mark against the chilled ridge of his clavicle. Savouring the way Jim tenses; the tiny moans that catch in the back of his throat. His nerves tingle, flaring at the slow progression of Jim’s fingers over his thighs, slowly finding their way under his layers of clothing. Drawing a shiver as he grazes low over his abdomen. ...and then a _yelp_ as he comes into contact with Sherlock’s bare skin.

They both freeze, staring at each other with only a couple inches and shaky breaths between them. Jim frowns at Sherlock’s wide-eyed alarm, silently enquiring.

“Cold.” An awkward second passes before he clarifies: “Your hands.”

“... _seriously_?”

Before Sherlock can respond with a level of outrage that he feels is appropriate to Jim’s amused disbelief, Jim slides his hands up, palms flat against Sherlock’s stomach; spidering toward his ribs. It’s like being tickled by a glacier.

“No. No, _no_ ; it’s _worse_ ,” Sherlock chides, squirming. He immediately catches Jim's wrists and tugs his hands away, wincing at the cold air seeping under his layers. “It’s horrid.”

Jim flicks at his nose, missing by an inch and letting his hands go limp in Sherlock’s grasp. The manic energy is beginning to fade into playful amusement, but he sounds almost innocent as he asks: “I can’t warm my hands? Your dear _science_ doesn’t have anything to say about repelling the cold?”

“ _No_. Not when it deals with my _pants_.”

Still, he takes one of Jim’s hands in both of his; slowly rubbing warmth into fingers that he hadn't previously noticed were shaking. Jim watches his face as he works. Despite his almost smile, something in the air between them feels like he’s looking for something. Searching. Silently questioning him. He doesn’t ask what Jim's looking for—he would be disappointing if he did. Besides, that’s not their way; asking something like that, and so directly, is only allowed when they can later pretend it hadn’t happened at all.

He switches hands, twitching a little at the difference in temperature. Very quietly, he asks again, “What did you find?”

Jim’s head tilts a little, like a curious bird, and he drops a quick kiss to Sherlock’s knuckles. His voice has an odd lilt to it as he replies, “Wait and see.”

* * *

 **Do you trust him?** JOHN asks, immediately distracting him.

Sherlock’s hands are bloody and now isn’t the best of times for this. They’d been delving, drowning in the heat and humidity but chattering loudly; enjoying themselves. One second Jim had been putting on a colourful display in response to something Sherlock's brother had said before he'd left. Then next, there was a screech of rending metal, the walkway swaying as it gave way, and a large hole where Jim had previously been mocking. His heart had pounded, genuine terror rising inside for the first time in ages as he and Sebastian, vocal processors whining with something like distress, peered down into the gloom. It had felt like eternity and no time at all before an emphatically resigned _“ah, fuck”_ had made its way through the dark to them. Jim was mostly fine when they reached him; a long, shallow cut across his ribs and back are the worst of his injuries.

But being occupied by cleaning a wound is the least useful time for a friend to express condemnation. He expects JOHN knows this—he’s been choosing odd moments to ask, clearly frustrated by Sherlock’s lack of answer. (The only bonus is that, at this angle, Jim probably won’t notice and, if he did, he’s too busy complaining to talk about it anyway.)

It’s not that Sherlock’s never considered the answer before; he _has_. It’s kept him awake several nights, revisited him whenever Jim has done something that’s given him pause or grated awkwardly against his own code. The thought of trust is something he can't quite escape. He considers as he washes some of the blood from Jim’s back and then from his own hands.

He _likes_ Jim. He likes his mind and his horrible sense of humour and the way nothing ever seems like an insurmountable problem when they’re together. He’s never been bored of Jim or truly afraid. The less pleasant aspects of Jim’s personality have always been fascinating, intriguing in a way they probably shouldn’t. He likes being _around_ him, however he can be. And, he supposes, that’s the closest either of them can ever get to trust. They enjoy each other, they respect each other, they’re loyal to themselves and where they currently walk the same path. Is it enough? _Yes. I think so._

When he’s shaken the water from his hands, he types back:

_> Do you trust me?_

JOHN doesn’t answer. He suspects trust, even for an AI, is less easy to make sense of than either of them are willing to consider.

* * *

They’ve been back in Carja territory for…Sherlock isn’t certain. He suspects it’s been about a week but he hasn’t been very preoccupied with the passage of time. He hasn’t seen anyone to ask them, either. The house Sherlock thinks of as belonging to Jim (he doesn’t know if it does) resides a handful of miles outside the nearest Carja town, swathed in jungle foliage and loitering at the edge of the Daybrink, the great lake. And they’ve been preoccupied since they arrived. Sebastian needed to be checked for any damage before he ran off to lounge in his hammock and Sherlock had gotten distracted by categorising species in the covered gardens. They’ve been swimming, of course. And bickering or debating is a frequent occurrence. But then there’s also _this_. Lying together, idly tracing patterns against each other's skin and watching the hazy shifting of light through the bed’s gauze-like curtains.

It’s too hot where Jim’s back rests against Sherlock’s chest. Sticky in the humidity. But they’ve been like this for a while and he doesn’t really mind. There’s sweat in the roots of Jim’s hair, his head lolls limply against Sherlock’s shoulder. He suspects he’s trying very hard not to writhe.

What had started out as lazy exploration, mapping out the patterns of Jim’s scars, has— _well_ , taken an expected turn, really. Fascinating, though. Watching the way a muscle tenses in Jim’s leg when he traces lightly and low across his abdomen. His toes curl and he tries to choke down quietly gasped curses every time Sherlock scratches, hard and long, over his inner thighs. It’s heady, learning how to tease reactions from him; well worth his patience when Jim’s willing to humour it. Today he is. Jim shifts restlessly against him as Sherlock massages his balls; lets his fingers slip away to graze over his thighs, and back to tease at the suggestion of eventual penetration, before taking him back in hand. Slowly rolling his flesh beneath his fingers to coax a low groan from the depths of Jim's throat.

A fitful breeze rustles through the plants outside carrying with it the scent of growing things and lake water as it creeps through the wooden shutters, cooling against the sheen of sweat on their bodies. Sherlock drags kisses along Jim's shoulder. Leisurely marks him with teeth and tongue and the barest brush of his lips. Jim scoffs, grumbling something under his breath, as Sherlock's hand trails back up his chest. Tracing around the cables sewn into his skin. Re-memorising the geography of his abdomen, stomach, sternum in barely-there caresses. Sherlock waits to feel his muscles relaxing, easing back into languid, almost pliable, calm. And bites, _hard_ , against Jim’s shoulder blade, raking his nails down his side in the same movement.

Jim _jolts_ with a ragged cry. His hand immediately reaches back to grab Sherlock's hair and tug him _back_. Panting, and sounding too pleased to be truly threatening, he snaps, “ _Bastard_.”

“So you claim,” Sherlock returns, forcing himself not to smile. He gently untangles Jim’s hand from his hair, trying not to think about the twinge of arousal that pressure had brought with it. Leans down to give the mark he’s left him a pseudo-petulant lick. “And yet you haven’t stopped me…”

With an almost audible eye roll, Jim huffs as if those words are among the most absurd he’s ever heard. His hand slips from Sherlock’s shoulder to prod at his thigh. And still he doesn’t stop him.

Allowing a grin, Sherlock idly traces back down Jim’s body; the end of each cable has a fascinating bit of scarring around it, but he’s far more interested in Jim’s reactions as he lightly strokes over the smooth skin just an inch or so above the base of Jim’s cock. Jim’s breath shudders out of him in a tremor that vibrates against Sherlock’s chest. Muscles in his back and legs tensing. Even in profile he can see Jim’s eyes flutter briefly closed. He’s been hard for a while now; sticky with precum and neglected as Sherlock plays, but a study in willpower nonetheless. Surely that deserves a reward, doesn’t it? He doesn’t immediately act. Just teases at it, enjoying as Jim’s restless shifting becomes more pronounced. Jim opens his mouth to speak— Sherlock cuts him off as he wraps a hand around his cock and gives him a single rough stroke.

Whatever Jim had intended to say tumbles into a needy moan.

He loosens his grip just enough to stroke him lightly. Barely enough pressure to tease let alone to actually satisfy, but the frustrated noises Jim keeps stifling in the back of his throat are delicious. (Truth be told, he’s not trying to get Jim to beg—though he’d enjoy it if and when he did; Jim’s never been hesitant in vocality where _this_ is concerned—but this part, the squirming and breathless need just before he breaks, has always been one of Sherlock’s favourites.)

Jim sags with a snarl and a rough exhale as Sherlock withdraws his hand to, surreptitiously, find the lube.

“Actually, how _dare_ you? You think you can—”

Sherlock slides his left hand from where it’s been resting at Jim’s hip and grasps the base of his throat in a silent promise. Jim goes still. Immediately. Breath catches. His frustration, his need, his impatience, all condenses to a single point of quivering tension; lust stirring Sherlock’s own, mostly ignored, arousal. His thumb strokes light circles over Jim’s carotid. He murmurs against his ear, low and warm, “I _do_. And you think it, too.”

Beneath his fingers, Jim’s pulse races; a tremor runs just under his skin, rattling each unsteady breath. Sherlock can’t help but think he’s beautiful like this. There’s an edge of possession to the thought but he doesn’t care. He has Jim for now. He _intends_ to enjoy him as long as possible. 

Jim groans as Sherlock takes his time to smear the lube down his cock. Slowly, slowly takes him in hand and gives him a firm stroke. A muscle in Jim’s thigh trembles as his leg falls open, feet losing purchase in the silken sheets.

“Look at you,” he chuckles in a near purr against his ear. “A couple touches and you’re nearly desperate…”

“Fucking _tease_ ,” Jim bites out, eyes falling closed.

“Yes.”

Sherlock ripples his fingers, massaging just under his crown. Jim gasps, grinding his arse back against Sherlock’s growing erection. For a brief moment he’s tempted to push Jim onto his knees and have him. _Immediately_. But that’s not the way this game goes and they both know it.

“Come on, then—” he strokes him firmly, steady, picking up speed only a little— “take what you want.”

Jim doesn’t waste words or time. Just thrusts into Sherlock’s next descent, meeting him with a curse. He dictates the pace. Faster, rougher. The back of his head pressing firmly into Sherlock’s shoulder as he rocks into his grasp, eager for relief. Hands slipping against cloth and skin in a bid for balance. To angle for harder thrusts.

Sherlock lavishes his neck and shoulders with slow kisses and taunting bites. _Mine. For now_. Presses his palm a bit firmer against Jim’s clavicles to hold him down as he writhes. Jim’s beautifully vocal as he moves, pushing for more until Sherlock obliges him. Faster, rougher. In almost no time, Jim’s hips stutter out of pace and he’s coming with near-desperate moans.

They’re both left panting in the wake of it. Sweating and tired for the second time today.

“Alright?” Sherlock murmurs against the top of his head, pulling his hands away to reach for the bowl of water and cloth they’d previously set on the bedside table.

Jim nods. Calm, pliable, but no longer hazy. He stays languid and relaxed against him as Sherlock cleans his hands. Only rousing himself when he’s handed the cloth to clean himself up. “You _are_ the worst tease.”

“You’ve said. Perhaps you bring it out in me.”

Jim snorts, briefly undignified.

The silence feels too relaxed again, inviting another nap or two. It’s still too hot, but Sherlock doesn’t mind. He likes this. May even like it enough to not mind a lack of work if it means they can, sometimes, have this. He presses a kiss to the top of Jim’s head. Rests contentedly against him, relaxed and thoughts reduced to a low hum until Jim sets aside the bowl and cloth.

“Do you ever intend to tell me what you found in the mountains?”

“Oh, _that_.” Jim turns his head to look at him with something like idle surprise. This close, he can’t tell if it’s genuine. He gives a soft hum, tracing a pattern onto Sherlock’s thigh without looking. Mischievously smiles. “Well. If I tell you, you might get bored of me sooner.”

Sherlock’s answer is immediate, without hesitation and entirely genuine. “Impossible.”

“ _Flatterer_.”

 _Only for you_ , he thinks, certain of it. He doesn’t think he’d feel this much devotion or admiration for anyone else.

The quiet lingers, comfortable instead of oppressive. Jim eventually eases out from between his legs to lay beside him, eyes too dark and too full of knowledge. As if he can look all the way down into the very depths of what some might call his soul. Sherlock looks back, unflinching. Accepting. The light plays in blurred wisps over their bare skin, shades of gold and amber illuminating them like a nobleman’s finery. Anointment from the Sun itself, if Sherlock cared much for tradition.

“It gave me an idea,” Jim finally says. His gaze wavers and Sherlock expects he’s hesitating before: “How do you feel about sea travel?”

Sherlock thinks about snapmaws and ancient, drowned cities; he thinks about floating on endless darkness. About never seeing Jim again if he were to leave. A pang of despair flares through him, aching and abyssal. He tries to shove it away and focus on the logical aspect of the question.

“I think...you would need something better than a fisherman’s boat if you expected to get anywhere. And initial transport there to begin with.”

Jim nods, half-lost in thought. “I’m sure I’d find _something_ for us.” He pauses just long enough to allow Sherlock to refute him; Sherlock only watches, attention rapt. “However long that takes.”

“Potentially ages.”

“So much for flattery.” His pouting leaks into his tone, twists the words into a sharp, sarcastic arc. 

Sherlock’s lips twitch. “I only doubt the availability of parts and supplies you may need.”

Jim answers in a light hum, unbothered. He lounges like a cat. Dozing and seemingly unaware; most likely ready to bolt at a second’s notice. He doesn’t flinch as Sherlock runs his thumb over the back of his palm.

“I suppose you’ll need something to do in the meantime.”

Jim blinks back to awareness with a slight frown, suspicious. “Why?”

Sherlock glances away, feigning hesitancy. Though his arousal’s faded, he can’t pretend he’s not excited about the prospect of their potential journey; of Jim being certain he’ll still want his company in however many years it takes to get there. He doesn’t say any of that, though. Can’t. _Won’t_. Doesn’t want Jim to retreat. Instead, he chooses the lightest available option. “...you _do_ occasionally bring up the need for my actions to have consequences, don’t you?”

An awkward pause settles before Jim catches on, understanding and revisiting the last few hours. Jim smirks. Trouble. Sherlock grins back, challenging, eager for whatever Jim has in store for him in the future.

And then Jim pounces.


End file.
